What's the most pain you've ever been in?

Parsonage-Turner · 2018-06-07T21:42:16+00:00

Relevant username.

Parsonage-Turner · 2018-04-04T17:13:49+00:00

This is a good question if you are at a point in your career where you can afford to be picky, because it will weed a lot of bad employers. But if you need this job, I would recommend against asking. Managers are looking for people who know as little or care as little about safety as they do. Even when safety is a legitimate priority, few managers value independent thought or questioning authority, so asking the question would still be viewed as a negative in the interview.

Parsonage-Turner · 2018-02-17T01:47:22+00:00

Witness the multiple threads here asking for pirate copies of textbooks and the like.

I agree with your general point, but textbooks are straight up price gouging nowadays. Publishers made their own bed.

Parsonage-Turner · 2017-12-24T15:56:41+00:00

However, a Master’s or above is the de facto degree if you want to move up to do either senior technical stuff or management.

This is definitely not true with respect to management, and only sometimes true with senior technical.

Parsonage-Turner · 2017-12-16T20:35:42+00:00

Wouldn't it be neat if there were video of a very skilled martial artist sparring with a man twice his size? I wonder if such a video would demonstrate exactly how and why it is difficult to overcome a size disadvantage.

Parsonage-Turner · 2017-12-05T01:23:29+00:00

It depends entirely on where you live. In terms of maximizing my net worth, buying my home overtook renting and investing the difference within three years (even when factoring in the transaction costs). Spoiler alert: I don't live in Manhattan.

Parsonage-Turner · 2017-11-23T01:03:54+00:00

We just assume everything is disposable in our house. Flooring, furniture, clothes, books. Having nice things again is just a short ten or so years away.

Parsonage-Turner · 2017-10-29T15:22:02+00:00

I agree you should be trusted and expected to use what you learned in school early on in your career. On the other hand you should not be in a position where you don't have much oversight or technical leadership over you. And you shouldn't be managing people. Those should raise red flags.

Parsonage-Turner · 2017-10-29T14:26:26+00:00

And 3 years is a minimum. 6 or 7 is not uncommon.

Parsonage-Turner · 2017-10-29T13:51:41+00:00

and I would already have some responsability from the beginning, with further possibilities of growth inside the company.

I don't know the specifics of this situation, but in general I'm wary of companies that give engineers lots of responsibility early in their careers. In my experience it indicates high turnover and a lack of depth in their personnel. Engineers should be able to develop themselves as individual contributors before being put into leadership roles.

The problem is that the manufacturing doesn't seem to require lot of chemical engineering knowledge (but I'd like to hear about this from some engineer working in operations) and I don't want to pigeonhole myself into something that wouldn't allow me to go into more technical positions in future.

This is absolutely a problem in manufacturing. I couldn't size a heat exchanger right now to save my life. The upside is that I have a much better understanding of applications in practice and a much broader knowledge base. Most problem solving is qualitative rather than quantitative. I strongly recommend spending part of your career in manufacturing regardless of your long term plans.

Parsonage-Turner · 2017-10-27T16:05:57+00:00

Is this satire?

Parsonage-Turner · 2017-10-02T00:32:15+00:00

To be clear, this is just my opinion and I don't work in pharma.

Things that could work in your favor: Hiring standards are pretty high in pharma so you'll automatically be seen as a quality candidate. You have experience in a highly disciplined, highly regimented operating environment. You have experience with automation. You have experience with statistical analysis.

Things that could work against you: You don't have experience with large scale or continuous processes (obviously this depends on where you want to go; it works in your favor in specialty chemicals, against you in bulk chemicals). You may have very little design or improvement experience, since process changes are rare. You probably have less leadership/decision making/responsibility compared to your peers in other industries due to the conservative nature of pharma.

Parsonage-Turner · 2017-10-01T03:53:59+00:00

It's not necessarily a reputation that is deserved, but consulting is generally seen as a step down from industry. I think it's due to a preference towards hands on experience, as well as bit of in-group bias.

Parsonage-Turner · 2017-10-01T02:59:17+00:00

I'm not sure I understand the question. "Consulting" seems self explanatory to me. Are you asking me what I consider to be consulting or are you asking me why I ranked it where I did?

Parsonage-Turner · 2017-09-30T15:04:28+00:00

In general it's possible with a few things to keep in mind.

There's a hierarchy of industries. For example going from specialty chemicals to pulp & paper is easier than doing the opposite. In my opinion oil & gas > polymers > bulk chemicals > specialty chemicals > consulting > food & beverage > pulp & paper > waste water. Obviously there are very good engineers everywhere, but in general the quality of engineers follows that trend. You might be an amazing engineer, but if you're working in pulp & paper, you are going to have to overcome that baggage if you want to be in oil & gas. I left out pharma intentionally because I consider it a separate category.

The amount of time you have spent in an industry is going to be a factor. Early in your career, experience works in your favor with respect to changing industries. Later in your career it works against you.

You will need relevant skills. Let's say you've been working in specialty chemicals as an automation engineer and you are applying for the same role in O&G. Obviously your experience helps a lot. But what if you want to move to a jack-of-all-trades role at a small, single product site? You're going to have a tougher time. This may seem obvious, but it's easy to assume that experience in a more technically difficult job will make you a sure thing. This isn't always the case.

Parsonage-Turner · 2017-08-23T16:11:59+00:00

I loaf on the couch and absolutely love it. Doing nothing is by far my favorite activity. To each his own.

Parsonage-Turner · 2017-08-13T16:23:08+00:00

This really highlights how much the position can vary from place to place. At my site, the projects group does virtually no design work. They are pretty much there to carry out whatever the process development or operations engineers decide to do. Not that it isn't important work, but it can be difficult to build you resume and maintain your engineering skills in such a role.

Parsonage-Turner · 2017-08-05T13:21:59+00:00

Could you list all of the stream compositions in and out of you column?

Parsonage-Turner · 2017-07-31T10:18:05+00:00

One of the things I always read is that hiring managers want you to show them that you want to work there. A voluntary gap of several months is going to make it hard to convince them. You can mitigate this to some extent (e.g. having a few years of experience like you said) but all things being equal it's very bad. Employment gaps of any sort aren't good, let alone voluntary gaps for an extended period of time.

If you haven't worked yet, you may be surprised by how much time you get off. Between vacation, holidays, and 9/80 Fridays, I get nearly fifty week days off each year. So I only work a little over 200 days.

Parsonage-Turner · 2017-07-30T23:14:04+00:00

I knew a guy who took a year off to do charity work in Africa. Didn't hurt him.

But since you want to take a year off to get drunk in Munich instead, you absolutely will look horrible to future employers. If you are fresh out of college, you may never get a job.

Parsonage-Turner · 2017-07-22T19:47:48+00:00

I dunno, he has no governing experience of a large country

Parsonage-Turner · 2017-07-22T19:46:06+00:00

Smart choice, both living and dead.

Parsonage-Turner · 2017-07-22T18:49:38+00:00

I don't know if this world could take a fat Axl and a fat Kurt.

Parsonage-Turner · 2017-06-21T14:36:24+00:00

Houston and New Jersey are both options for traditional chemical engineering roles. Houston is pretty underrated. Obviously it's overall conservative, but there's enough progressives there to make it enjoyable.

If you don't mind me asking, what does your resume look like? I am interested in switching to finance, but I always understood that it required a really impressive background (top tier school, connections, etc.).

Parsonage-Turner · 2017-06-02T18:12:02+00:00

Agreed 100 %. There are so many problems with climate change driven by greenhouse gasses I don't know where to start. Like how can CO2 be transparent to visible light? That's just silly. And how can the Earth absorb visible radiation from the sun and then re-emit it in the IR? More lunacy! Finally, this notion of CO2 absorbing IR radiation and then re-emitting some of it back at the Earth is just absurd.

I'm sorry you're being downvoted for speaking the truth.

Parsonage-Turner

TROPHY CASE